Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society honcho who captured the SCOTUS and thereby set in motion fiat rule by unelected religious kooks and anti-regulation and anti-tax activists, isn’t content to rest on his laurels. According to a ProPublica investigation, Leo has taken an executive leadership role in an organization called Teneo that aims to be a “Federalist Society for everything.”
Having a SCOTUS supermajority and 28% of the federal judiciary in his pocket isn’t enough. Leo and his confederates want to remake the rest of society in the image of their brand of conservatism, including media, industry, technology, politics, education, sports, cultural institutions, etc.
Many Republican bigwigs are already on board, including DeSantis. It would be disastrous for democracy if they achieve even a tenth of the inroads into society more broadly that the Federalist Society did into the judiciary specifically. But I couldn’t help but smile at the delusional view of how “the left” functions to gain cultural hegemony, as described by Teneo co-founder Evan Baehr:
“Imagine a group of four people sitting at the Harvard Club for lunch in midtown Manhattan,” he said in a 2020 Teneo video: “a billionaire hedge funder,” “a film producer,” “a Harvard professor” and “a New York Times writer.”
“The billionaire says: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if middle school kids had free access to sex-change therapy paid for by the federal government?’” Baehr continued. “Well, the filmmaker says, ‘I’d love to do a documentary on that; it will be a major motion film.’ The Harvard professor says, ‘We can do studies on that to say that’s absolutely biologically sound and safe.’ And the New York Times person says, ‘I’ll profile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender.’ ”
After a single lunch, Baehr concluded, elite liberals can “put different kinds of capital together” and “go out into the world” and “basically wreck shop.”
If only, dude. If only. Has he met elite liberals?
Anyhoo, inspired by this fantasy, Baehr moved to create a “counter-effort,” which Leo is now infusing with vast piles of donor cash so Teneo can set up secretive networks across multiple fronts. Weird how it never occurs to them to just try to persuade people with the power of their ideas. Maybe because their ideas are shitty and unpopular?
Next up, ambulatory unitard Jim Jordan’s “weaponization of government” committee interviewed Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger today about revelations in the so-called Twitter Files. Here’s Aaron Rupar’s supercut of Dems pushing back:
I particularly liked how Dem committee members referred to Taibbi and Shellenberger as Musk’s handpicked “scribes.” Back in the day, Taibbi produced some pretty righteous rants about corrupt, unaccountable plutocrats fucking the country. If he has any vestigial sense of shame behind the trademark smirk, being called a fat cat’s handmaiden might be embarrassing.
The Fox News supercut will be different, and producing that supercut is the point of these hearings. But I do question the effectiveness of these shit-shows. Carlson’s dishonest manipulation of the January 6th footage he received from Kevin McCarthy may backfire since they keep the Trump-fomented insurrection and Carlson’s duplicity as revealed by the Dominion lawsuit filings top of mind.
Speaking of the Dominion revelations, Josh Marshall at TPM calls out the superficial reporting on the Fox News lawsuit, specifically figures from alleged news organizations who are framing the story as a liberal vs. conservative media thing. Marshall says that shows they have zero understanding of the business of media or about the laws that govern the press:
Fox broadcasts deceptive, disingenuous and flat-out false claims all the time. But to get into legal trouble you have to defame some person or entity with legal standing. The “woke mob” can’t bring a case. American democracy can’t bring a lawsuit. Politicians are seldom able to do so for a mix of political and legal reasons. Finally, for a case to have any teeth, the reputational damage must have some significant financial impact. This is why the particular dynamics of the Big Lie represented a kind of legal perfect storm.
For months Fox broadcast a series of demonstrably false claims about a specific, profitable and large private company: Dominion. There’s little question those lies damaged the company’s reputation and ability to sell its services. The details included in its motion also leave little question that people up and down the chain of authority at Fox knew those claims were false and simply didn’t care. Their focus was ratings and money. Under Sullivan, no defamation case is a slam dunk. But this is about as close as you get to that. The meaning of “actual malice” has been litigated extensively over the years. And the set of facts set out above basically meet all the definition points.
How unsurprising that Fox News’s self-appointed sister media outlets would fall into lazy “both sides” framing. They are nothing but glorified gossip columnists.
Open thread.
bbleh
So what I want to know is, did Baehr leave the Illuminati off his list accidentally, or was there a sinister purpose behind it?
Alison Rose
THANKS, I HATE IT.
Also, that ooga-booga scary librul conversation is pathetic. Especially since the NYT has decided that giving space to concern-trolls regarding trans kids is the most important job of journamalism.
Alison Rose
@bbleh: they’re hiding under the table recording everything
Kay
I think Taibbi is upset that he isn’t being censored- instead, no one cares what he says.
Oh, these media celebrities. It is one big ego. Look at ME, listen to ME. So, so sick of them. For what they’re paid we could trade the whole pack for hundreds of real local reporters making 70k to 100k a year. Get some actual value.
Media is a broken market. It rewards junk.
Captain C
Fixed that.
Other than profit, control, status, and ability to apply sadism at will and get praised for it, I really can’t discern what Leo and his sick minions want from life (or maybe the above is just it). Maybe they just like complaining, preferably about Those People (for whatever value of Those People at the moment), but they seem happy to wreck everyone else’s lives given the opportunity.
Gravenstone
You’re thinking of aglets…
delphinium
Man, I am so glad we have such awesome folks on our side! While I am not overly optimistic about the world in general, I do think these hearings will be a net negative for Republicans.
On another note-in a different lawsuit a couple years ago, Tucker basically stated it’s not his problem if his viewers are so stupid that they believe what he says. No one loathes these folks more than Fox or their own congress critters. Yet they keep voting Republican.
Baud
Well, I feel like a dupe. Who knew?
Kay
I know a lot of people liked his rants about Wall Street, but like 99% of these people he’s innumerate. His numbers were ridiculous. I’m amused that not only are the media celebrities innumerate, their editors are too, because the numbers are SO RIDICULOUS they never should have gotten by an editor.
TaMara
This may be true, but if twitter is any representation, McConnell has pissed off MAGA and the other ultra-righters and they are saying the most horrific things about his accident and health. At least they are consistent in their vileness.
kindness
If, god forbid, the US ever does go down the authoritarian & fascist hell hole, those same ‘liberal’ media people will be so shocked when they find themselves in the very same gulags that are created for the enemies of the state. I’m not wishing here other than that doesn’t happen.
Paul in KY
@Baud: I didn’t know it was that easy…
Baud
@kindness:
“How did the Dems let this happen?”
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Old school tactic. The microchips in vaccines now transmit everything directly to HQ.
//
Baud
See this is what’s ridiculous. Everyone knows a New York Times writer wouldn’t be caught dead in any restaurant except a Midwestern diner.
delphinium
@Alison Rose: Yeah, haven’t we already been there/done that, didn’t like it, didn’t even bother to get the t-shirt, and moved on? Fuck these people.
Bostondreams
Just a reminder that Matt Taibbi had a nasty habit of sexual harrassment and declared that Russian women were superior because they embraced being sex objects.
dmsilev
@Kay: Innumerate and proud of it. I’m not sure why it’s something to be proud of; people don’t generally ‘boast’ that they couldn’t pass any English class more advanced than 8th grade grammar.
Almost Retired
Ugh Matt Taibbi. I hope he travels home from the hearing on a fast-moving Norfolk Southern train.
Betty Cracker
From the Ohio Capital Journal:
It’s always gratifying to see crooked pols get locked up even if, sadly, it rarely changes the political calculus of voters.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Nice. Kay will be thrilled. She’s mentioned that case before.
RepubAnon
@Alison Rose: It does explain the NYT coverage of LGBTQ issues. A right-wing billionaire, a James O’Keefe wannabe, a Florida college administrator, and a New York Times reporter got together…
delphinium
@Betty Cracker: Some good news for Ohio.
Kay
I think one of the things that has happened with this substack, alternate “publisher” business model the professional contrarians use is that they are now completely surrounded by people who SUBSCRIBE to their “newsletters” or whatever. Those people all agree with them. They created their own little bubble and they have “a lot” of subscribers if you’re talking about a one-man business model- they do quite well with the little echo chambers they’ve created, but their subscriber base is TINY in terms of the US population.
They wildly overestimate both how “interesting” they are and how “mainstream” their work is.
Greenwald and Taibbi look at subscribers and revenue and think “wow- A LOT of people agree with me and buy my stuff” and it’s true in the sense that it’s “a lot” of people buying the work of ONE media celebrity, it just isn’t “a lot” of people in terms of public opinion.
Honestly, it doesan’t surprise me at all that they would make this error, because it goes to how they are innumerate – 10,000 people buying their dumb newsletters or online channels at 60 bucks a year is a lot of money! It just isn’t a lot of people in a country with 400 million.
Brachiator
Oh, those liberal elites. They are just so sassy!
sab
Larry Householder and Matt Borges convicted!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Yay! Householder was so smug and insolent. I really think he believed he was protected, like a mafioso o something.
Just as a side note, he had horrible lawyers. The judge had contempt for them (bad at their jobs) so I’m sure the jury did too. I was so happy – dumbo hired horrible people. LOOOOOOOW quality.
Kay
@sab:
woo hoo! If they hadn’t have convicted with the recordings of the corruption and the whitleblowers you could just stick a fork in this state- over.
Although “whisleblower” is the wrong word. One of the scumbags rattted out the other rats :)
Steeplejack
@Alison Rose:
C’mon, man. “It will be a major motion film.” Clearly this guy has his finger on the media pulse—of 1920. Which is only slightly later than where they want to take us back to.
narya
@Gravenstone: What’s sinister about shoelaces?
Urban Suburbanite
Fucking Shellenberger. That pompous foof puts out a lot of the talking points used by Seattle-area grifters, especially Andrea Suarez and that clout chasing buffoon Jonathan Choe.
Chris
I mean, to quite an extent, “Federalist Society for everything” already exists. It’s called the Republican Party. Or, if you prefer, movement conservatism.
Fox News and talk radio do for the media what the Federalist Society do for the judiciary, and have been since the nineties.
Evangelical church networks and their various counterparts in the Catholic Church do for Christianity what the Federalist Society does for the judiciary, and have been since the eighties.
The intelligence community has had this problem since its inception; there’s no one name for it, but from the purges of the McCarthy era to “Team B” in the seventies to the OSP in the 2000s, there’s always some new intelligence bureau whose job is to produce right-wing talking points and discredit anything the CIA says that might disagree with them.
From homeschooling kids to “Christian” academies like Liberty and Bob Jones, there’s always been academic equivalents to this, though they’re now pushing very hard to take over the entire system.
The less said about science, the better: from global warming to the health effects of smoking to Covid19, any science that doesn’t say what right-wingers want to be true will instantly see a dozen foundations subsidized by the affected industries and rich ideologues to produce a counter-narrative.
And so on, and so forth. This “Teneo” shit is literally describing the America I’ve lived in my entire life. Every single aspect of American society has a parallel institution whose job is to be an ideologically acceptable (dare I say it, “politically correct”) version of the field; if possible, to take over the field entirely; if not, to at least bend it as far as possible in their direction. It’s deeply creepy, actually: it very much comes off like the way the Nazi Party and Communist Party in the old totalitarian countries would try to turn themselves into all-purpose substitutes for your workplace, your church, your union, your PTA, your YMCA, your corner bar, and your dating service all rolled into one. Even such innocuous things as video game, role-playing, or general fandoms regularly see neo-Nazi groups crop up that try to turn them into their personal playgrounds.
Manyakitty
@Kay: Matt Taibbi really disappointed me. I was a big fan of his work before he bought into the aggrieved Bernie bro persona and now he’s just pathetic. 🤮
Dangerman
I was born and raised in San Bernardino; spent a lot of time in those Mountains (9 Peaks Trail!). Anyway, they could use some help; they got hit ugly hard (there are animal support options at the link since that is a particular BJ interest):
mountainstrong.us
Manyakitty
@Bostondreams: ew. Now I’m sorry I wasted even a minute on him. Just…ew.
Steeplejack
@TaMara:
@nycsouthpaw:
They must have taken southpaw’s advice.
Chris
@Manyakitty:
The only thing I knew him for was that incendiary takedown of the teabagger movement he wrote sometimes in 2009 or 2010. Which was a true relief to read at the time. Was sorry he ended up turning out to be such a turd.
Manyakitty
@Kay: and now what? We’re still left holding the bag, right? Where’s all the money?
Anyway
Baud
Heh. Plus Billionaire hedge funders are all (mostly) RW reactionaries. Where does he think Leonard Leo gets his gazillion dollars from? Asswipes.
cain
@Chris: Yes, and tell me how much of that money will end up being grift and self paying themselves?
It’s just another vehicle to take in cash from the rubes. I’m not sure how this dwindling mass of “donors” are going to help pay for all this.
Wait till they raise taxes on the middle class. I’m not sure how they are giong to keep getting that grift – the billionaires are going to have to fund it more :-)
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
I have conceived a solution to the Leonard Leo problem involving a public demonstration of something that would guarantee no more Leonard Leo activism (and would cause pause to anyone who wanted to follow his example), but I can’t post it.
It does give me some mental joy in the imagining.
MattF
Re: Dominion, here’s their new brief in the defamation lawsuit. I disagree with the claim that the latest Fox info is truthful— the Foxies (particularly Carlson) are all liars all the time. But I suppose you have to make some assumptions, sometimes.
ETA: And, it hardly needs to be said that the little gathering at the Club is all Jews.
Manyakitty
@Chris: such a drag, right? Maybe a lot of these people are like Seymour Hersh and were only ever as good as their editors in the first place.
Manyakitty
@MattF: Mais oui. We run everything, anyway. (Rolls eyes into late next year)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I mean I could…
FelonyGovt
@Chris: And in some cases has managed to infiltrate itself into everyone’s life. Look at the Catholic hospital chains that have taken over large swaths of Northern California and other places, and ban abortions, sterilizations etc. in their facilities.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
He’s not really an aggrieved Bernie Bro. He’s one of the cadre of aggrieved “cancel culture” middle aged men although there is some overlap between Bernie Bros and aggrieved cancel culture middle aged male essayists.
“Stop cancelling me!” the ninnies shriek. Oh, okay, sorry. I wasn’t paying any attention to you at all. Did you want to say something? Go ‘head with that. By all means.
Have you read his elaborate theory for the Twitter files? It’s a fucking incoherent mess, like everything they write. I can’t make heads or tails of it and I probably follow this more closely than 99.9 % of people. No one is paying attention to his stupid “scandal” because even if they wanted to they wouldn’t be able to follow it.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Might put a warning on links to PDF files. Some devices automatically download them without opening them or giving you a chance to decline the download.
Alison Rose
@TaMara: Man, damn them for making me have even an iota of sympathy for him.
Manyakitty
@Kay: he’s absolutely a ninny now. I guess I didn’t realize how bad he was until the Bernie era gave him the chance to drop his mask. Pathetic. PATHETIC.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
No, I agree. Where IS the money? The at-fault corporation only paid 250k in fines and they are down the road. So that’s the unjust, bad part. How they got away with it.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: WTF? Seriously.
@Steeplejack: Always a good idea, but I found the last sentence more concerning than the prospect of an unwanted download. I hope I’m missing something obvious.
Manyakitty
@Kay: and now we get to pay to warehouse him for a few years. Ugh
burritoboy
They think like this because that’s how their brains work. It’s likely impossible for them at their ages to rewire their brains. Look, I was an investment banker for decades, and this is how we do stuff. But we could do that because everyone’s prime motivation around the table was clear (i.e. almost always more money) and we could (at least in theory) even talk numbers and how the money was to flow in very precise terms if we wished. Now, I’m a writer (I wrote a book while I was a banker, so it’s not entirely new to me) and that the process is inherently completely different. I know another guy like me who spent a few years at a very large hedge fund. But he always wanted instead to write experimental literature. He eventually went and has been making horror films and TV, as well as writing experimental stories and novels. While his accountants I’m sure can tell him exhaustively about the cash flows on his TV shows, there is – not even conceptually – a way to quantitatively tell this guy if what he is doing is satisfying or more worthwhile than continuing his career in hedge funds. (I think he’s doing great, but there’s no numbers whatsoever that I can communicate to him that really mean anything. I think I have very good taste in horror literature and film, but I have not a single number that I could utter that makes any real sense.)
This is what happens when your brain gets deformed by capitalism.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: I love the word “racketeering”. It sounds so old-timey, like anyone convicted of it should be wearing a pinstripe suit with wide lapels and a fedora.
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: RICO!!! (Calling Popehat)
Kay
@Manyakitty:
I think they lost their minds with the combo of BLM and Me Too. It was like the perfect storm of threats to middle aged white men :)
They have been screaming about being cancelled ever since and of course they’re not really “cancelled” since they are EVERYWHERE, screaming, all the time.
Alison Rose
@Manyakitty: Because of my age, I cannot hear the word rico without my brain immediately adding “…suave“
Gravenstone
@narya: Aglets
jeffreyw
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
auto-da-fe?
Manyakitty
@Kay: right? I wish cancelled actually meant something.
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: Yeah, that too 😂😂
Chris
@Kay:
It took me years to realize how many of my fellow white people had lost their shit over BLM. Even Democratic voters who had no intention of not voting or switching sides because of it were repeating the idiotic canards like “but why don’t they care about black on black crime?”
OverTwistWillie
@Kay:
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
Uncle Cosmo
Wait, wait, don’t tell me – Does it involve five hobbits, a burro, and a 55-gallon drum of boysenberry syrup?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
Don’t forget the trans panic!
Paul in KY
@Manyakitty: I think (for them) ‘cancelled’ means “I’m losing alot of money”, so we can all grin about that…
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
I took that last sentence as (bungled) snark.
trollhattan
DWS is damn good here.
JPL
@Almost Retired: LOL I’m stealing that, just sayin.
MattF
@Steeplejack: If I messed up, apologies. Accusations that a small group of conspirators is actually in charge of everything that the speaker disapproves of ring an alarm bell with me. I should look more carefully before I leap.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
‘Teneo’ is sorta like the seagulls’ line in Finding Nemo, isn’t it? “Mine!”
He seems nice. Coulda just called it ‘Meum’ though.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
I passed over it. Betty Cracker had a stronger reaction. Perhaps she thought you were referring to something in the document.
Captain C
I thought he preferred rent boys.
bbleh
@Paul in KY: I think for most of them “canceled” means “some people don’t like it, and some of them even tell me they don’t like it, when I rant about hating {choose one or more: Black people, Latinos, immigrants of any race, LGBTQ folk, Muslims, Jews, happy young people…}, and I can’t stand that!
bbleh
@Captain C: in his younger days that wasn’t the word, but I dunno about today…
Captain C
@jeffreyw:
What’s an auto-da-fe?
It’s what you oughtn’t to do but you do anyway.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: She’s had a few good moments in these hearings. Seems like she was keeping a lower profile after all the foolishness of 2016.
Dan Goldman has been very good. I’m glad the two Justice Dems he faced in the primary couldn’t do rock-paper-scissors back when they were holding “Anybody But Goldman” rallies in the primary
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So, Ms Cracker, I gather you’re no longer on twitter, but are you the source of either of these nicknames?
Frankensteinbeck
I noticed something in the Dominions/Fox lawsuit: Fox admitted they don’t set the narrative. The framing of doing it for the money wasn’t that it was a great, profitable story. The framing was that if they didn’t vomit their viewers’ favorite conspiracies right back at them, those viewers would go looking for someone who would. Fox’s role wasn’t to lead, it was to validate.
Manyakitty
@Paul in KY: acceptable. Also, they’re all such fragile little crybabies who completely fall apart in the face of the slightest breeze of disagreement with their statements from on high.
Manyakitty
@Captain C: that reminds me– History of the World Part 2 is out.
Bill Arnold
@TaMara:
McConnell is a polio survivor and has lingering weakness.
He hasn’t AFAIK shared many details e.g. how many symptoms of post-polio syndrome are affecting him, but it is … probable that both his 2019 fall (broken collarbone, from news reports) and his fall yesterday evening resulting in (at least) a concussion were related to momentary lapses in attention while ambulating in places where a fall could hurt him.
different-church-lady
LIKE THOSE FOUR PEOPLE WOULD EVER BE HAVING LUNCH TOGETHER?!?
Bill Arnold
@Anyway:
They mean Soros. They’re avoiding using his name directly because they are beginning to internalize that they get called out of antisemitism of they use his name.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bill Arnold:
That story does sound exactly like antisemites think the world works, if you just add ‘all four are Jews.’
different-church-lady
A billionaire hedge funder, a film producer, a Harvard professor and a New York Times writer walk into a bar, and the bartenders says, “What is this, a
jokefever nightmare of a conservative ogre?”different-church-lady
Fuck it, there is about to be LOTS OF ALCOHOL.
thruppence
The Federalist Society is clearly the Feudalist Society, they’re just now becoming more open about it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: can I come over? do you have enough lots?
katdip
That Teneo shit is scary, it’s like a millenial Opus Dei funded with libertarian tech bro money. If it weren’t so scary I’d laugh at their “shared belief that the conservative worldview drives human flourishing.” As if these supposedly data-driven masters of the universe can point to one example of that. Blue states generate far more wealth and red states are consistently at the top of the lists of human suffering (poverty, life expectancy, maternal death, uninsured, etc.) definitely not human flourishing.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have a truly excessive amount of lots.
Turgidson
@Kay:
Dear god yes. I forget the exact number he floated, but he said that TARP secretly cost US taxpayers many trillions of dollars. I mean, what?
I enjoyed his blunt (and this time at least, accurate) description of the Teabaggers as a bunch of demented racist lunatics who didn’t even know what they were mad about. But I can’t think of anything else he’s done that withstands even modest scrutiny.
Paul in KY
@bbleh: That too!
Paul in KY
@Manyakitty: Yes, that is so true!